Readability Level and SEO: A Powerful Correlation

Readability is the measure of how easy a piece of text is for reading and perceiving.

This is the most ignored thing. Some bloggers don’t know the powerful relation between readability and SEO.

The point is here! You may have high-quality content. Nevertheless, what about audience retention? Can you expect 100% of your readers to read a blog post that's written in post-graduate students' level? Nope. Right?

By writing in advanced level, your content will be grouped under "advanced readability section" of search engines.
In order to reach a big number of audience you have to be grouped under basic or medium readability level. You should opt for real simple writing style. This counts more in niche blogs.

How can I check whether my post is readable or not? The answer is to make use of Flesch-Kincaid Readability level.

What the heck is Flesch-Kincaid Readability?

There is a dozen of readability measures, Flesch-Kincaid Readability level is the most accurate one. It takes all the factors that affect readability while calculating.

You can easily check readability levels of your blog posts using this tool.

It calculates how easy or difficult a piece of content is to read.

What formula is used?

The formula for Flesch-Kincaid Readability level is,

Look at the above formula.

For getting better readability scores, below are the rules.

Count of words per sentence should be low. Shorter sentences work better.

Count of syllables in your post should be low.

The above are the two powerful tips, you should follow to get high readability scores.

A syllable is a unit of pronunciation.

Word blog – ger has two syllables.

The word re – a – da – bi – li – ty has 6 of them. You can check for other words here.

Keep the syllables count of single words low. It improves the readability levels greatly. Having fewer syllables per word is important. It is important than having shorter sentences (analyze the formula).

What scores are ideal for SEO?

It's tough to say. It varies across the niches.

Ok, let me be generic. The possible readability levels range from 0 to 120. Practically the range is 30 to 90.

For most sort of content, readability levels of 70 to 84 are desirable.

Above is rough. Because it all depends on your niche.

Google also knows this. It maintains a table where it lists the ideal readability levels of various niches.

The moment I came across a great post that is ranking high I check its readability level. Almost all the high-ranking posts have great readability levels.

High readability = high rankings

High readability correlates to high-ranking. Correlation does not mean causation.

If your content has a few complex words, expect a low readability level.

How to check your blog's readability levels?

Make use of "site:" operator.

All the posts on my blog have normal levels.

I am on the way to edit my existing blog posts for better readability levels. Editing them for better levels would be a tough task once they are live on your blog.

Indirect impact of readability levels on SEO

Posts with high readability level, keep visitors for a longer duration. Because the content is easily readable. Once readers come across a blog post that is easily readable, they rarely bounce off the blog.

To make the task of editing old posts easier, here is the killer tip.
Make use of Chrome extension called Pearls. It allows you to find multiple words or phrases on the page. It highlights those words.
Search for your common complex sentences and edit them.

Don't use Pearls extension on your WordPress Post Editor. It may mess up with HTML stuff.

Ever since I started this editing process, my organic traffic has increased by 125%. After noticing that, I wrote this post.

What are your views? What tricks do you follow to improve readability? Did you know that there is a relationship between SEO and readability? Let me know in comments.

DISCLOSURE

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8 thoughts on “Readability Level and SEO: A Powerful Correlation”

Useful information and resources shared. It was a really good read and points are noted. You are absolutely right site readability (especially in mobile devices) and usability are going to be strong signals for organic ranking in coming days.

Actually not, Akshay. I fully read the complete article which I used to do always before leaving any comment on any blog (though I am not a blogger). I am a bit clueless how my comment went irrelevant with this post.
I know the differences between readability and usability but what I meant is that readability and usability are the factors through which Google will decide how is the sites user experience, which ultimately helps in ranking and conversion optimization.
Please correct me if I am wrong. I am always ready to learn. 🙂

Hey, Soumya, no worries. It happens for the best of us. I think it's just a glitch in flow of your thoughts.
And you are right. Both readability and usability are crucial as far as Google is concerned.

Great article, I use readability in my article writing. Well I don't typically write but I have my writers use the tool at http://fixtext.com to figure out which sentences have a bad readability score. I've had significant success once transitioning all my article writing to have a higher FK score.

I struggle with this. I use the Yost plugin (free version). It does a great job of keeping me on track. Sometimes, my readability bombs. I write a blog about cancer and once in a while the posts get a bit scientific. I recently had a bulleted list of the stages of leukemia. Each bullet began with "stage…" That was a big red flag. I sometimes wonder if I should just blow it off when I run into that issue. I've spent 2 hours today trying to get this right. Medical writing is often passive. It is a bit of a niche. I often find myself sacrificing good writing for the sake of readability.

Hi, Heather. Don't worry too much about readability. In case, of medical research articles, it's tough to maintain low syllable count and even Google understands this. As I told you the rules depends upon niche. For research articles anything between 45 – 60 is ideal.

Look what score your competitors for the keywords have, to get an idea.

Don't stress too much. It's just a correlation. That means an increase in readability may result in increased audience retention rate and which in turn boosts rankings.

About Akshay Hallur

Hi, I’m Akshay Hallur. The founder of this blog GoBloggingTips. I’m a professional full-time blogger, an internet marketer, and a trainer. I’m here to help bloggers like YOU to create an outstanding blog and earn money from it.